Summary

This paper was presented at NASA's first Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop. It discusses the potential of the Zero Point Field (ZPF) as the underlying concept for a propulsive device. The ZPF is summarily derived from Quantum Physics and Stochastic Electrodynamics, and its relation to gravitational and inertial mass is developed. Newton's laws of motion are related to the ZPF electrodynamics, and ZPF fluctuations together with relativistic equations of motion are invoked to show the impossibility of matter with negative mass under the ZPF interpretation.

Abstract

This NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop seeks to explore the concepts that could someday enable interstellar travel. The effective superluminal motion proposed by Alcubierre (1994) to be a possibility owing to theoretically allowed space-time metric distortions within general relativity has since been shown by Pfenning and Ford (1997) to be physically unattainable. A number of other hypothetical possibilities have bee summarized by Millis (19997). We present herein an overview of a concept that has implications for radically new propulsion possibilities and has a basis in theoretical physics: the hypothesis that the inertia and gravitation of matter originate in electromagnetic interactions between the zero-point-field (ZPF) and the quarks and electrons constituting atoms. A new derivation of the connection between the ZPF and inertia has been carried through that is properly co-variant, yielding the relativistic equation of motion from Maxwell's equations. This opens new possibilities, but also rules out the basis of one hypothetical propulsion mechanism: Bondi's "negative inertial mass", appears to be an impossibility.

Paper